Media monolith Comcast still isn’t ready to let Disney have Fox, making an offer for the company that easily tops the House of Mouse. Fox has been the subject of an ongoing bidding war between the two companies since even before the December announcement that Disney and Fox had reached a deal for the former to acquire a large portion of the latter’s assets. While Fox would retain things like the Fox broadcast network, Fox Sports, and Fox News - with plans to spin those off into a new smaller company called simply New Fox - Disney would absorb Fox’s movie and TV studios, as well as cable networks like FX, and Fox’s stake in streaming service Hulu.
Clearly, acquiring all of those Fox assets would be a huge win for any company big enough to afford the purchase, so it’s really not hard to see why Comcast is so dead set on coming out on top in this fight with Disney. Comcast already owns NBC Universal, and adding every huge movie, TV show, and franchise Fox controls to their already massive empire would instantly vault Comcast into the stratosphere when it comes to Hollywood players. The same can certainly be said for Disney, although among fans, the biggest factor leading to most supporting Disney in this battle is that them winning would allow Fox’s Marvel characters to come home to the loving arms of Marvel Studios.
Now, Variety reports that Comcast has officially made a $65 billion all-cash bid for Fox, a huge jump upward from Disney’s current $52.4 billion all-stock offer for the company’s assets. This move had been expected, especially after yesterday’s final governmental approval of the huge merger between AT&T and Time Warner. Fox previously scheduled a shareholder meeting on July 10, which would see them take a vote on whether to proceed with the sale to Disney. With Comcast’s huge new offer, a monkey wrench may have been thrown into the works.
Of course, just because Comcast has attempted to be a spanner in the works of Fox’s sale to Disney, doesn’t mean it’ll matter in the long run. While Comcast’s offer will certainly be tempting, it’s important to note that Comcast actually outbid Disney in the first place, making a $60 billion all-stock offer late last year. Still, Fox decided to move forward with Disney, for various reasons. Plus, if Disney is truly concerned that this new all-cash offer presents a problem, there’s nothing stopping them from topping it with their own even better all-cash proposal.
As mentioned above, while it may seem weird to “root for” one giant media conglomerate over another in a potential business transaction, the fact that Disney’s purchase would eventually get the X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Deadpool under the MCU umbrella ensures that the public at large will continue to support Disney over Comcast. It also doesn’t help that Comcast - one of the largest cable companies out there - is generally despised for things like constant rate hikes and poor customer service. Whether the potential bad P.R. of selling to Comcast over Disney will matter to Fox shareholders remains to be seen. For now, if the vote still happens on July 10, it’ll illuminate a lot.
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Source: Variety
